LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!

Classes & Seminars

  1. Events
  2. Classes & Seminars

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Memoir: The Process — with Kimberly Dark — begins 8/7/21

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

STARTS: August 7th, 2021 WHERE: Zoom WHEN: 3-5PM PST—four weekly 2-hour sessions over Zoom on Saturdays (8/7, 8/14, 8/21, 8/28) TEACHER: Kimberly Dark COST: $350 (Payment plans always available—please contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com) SCHOLARSHIPS: Yes, scholarships are available. Please follow this link to apply. Memoir: The Process Memories aren’t enough. We have to connect them to culture, to history, to zeitgeist—and then be as clear and specific about our unique perspectives as possible. In this generative workshop, we’ll open a number of creative doorways (and windows and portholes and tunnels) into meaning and we’ll discuss how and why they work. We’re going to work on releasing the story without it getting caught in the mind first. We’ll work together in four, two-hour, face-to-face (Zoom) meetings.…

Continue readingMemoir: The Process — with Kimberly Dark — begins 8/7/21
$350

Writing About Sex

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From kissing to seduction—to the deed itself—writing about sex can be one of the hardest feats in storytelling. We’ll study the way writers like Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, Zadie Smith, D. H. Lawrence, and others approach this facet of craft. Our conversations will explore how sex can be implied or explicit, while still being literary and classy. Class one is entirely devoted to writing the literary kiss, and future sessions will cover sex “implied” with its absence on the page, homosexual sex, and heterosexual sex. We’ll cover the do’s and don’t’s, address common “cliches,” and inspect different ways writers represent sex in their stories, so that we can better assess what might work best for ours. Each writer will have the opportunity to share a…

Continue readingWriting About Sex
$195

Premise Course: What is feminist power? Who decides? Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us in a discussion of Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata and Spike Lee’s modern film adaptation of the book Chi-Raq. The class will focus on the Aristophanes comedy and will use Spike Lee’s film as a point of modern reference and comparison. About the book: “Aristophanes’ comic masterpiece of war and sex remains one of the greatest plays ever written. Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favours with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.” – Premise Goodreads page About the film: Spike Lee’s 2015 Chi-Raq is designed to provoke and make us…

Continue readingPremise Course: What is feminist power? Who decides? Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq
$35

August BIPOC Craft Series: Fiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This monthly craft series for BIPOC writers invites you to dream and imagine new worlds and characters for fictional storytelling. Using beloved and renowned BIPOC writers as models for fictional narratives, we will notice, play, practice, share and grow as writers. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses have at least one access spot available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you would like to take a writing class at the Access Rate. Jacqueline Fitzgerald is an…

Continue readingAugust BIPOC Craft Series: Fiction
$50

Revivify: Breathing Life into Dead Matter with Lidia Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A three-hour online webgasm with a 15-minute intermission WITH: Lidia Yuknavitch and at least one special guest. WHEN: Saturday, August 21st 1PM-4PM Pacific (4PM-7PM Eastern) WHERE: ZOOM! (But of course.) Meeting ID will be provided ahead of time. (Interested in this event but unable to join it live? All registered attendees will receive a link to a recording of it that will be viewable for one week afterwards.) HOW MUCH: $150. Payment plans are available, contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are always available. Click here to apply. "No one is better at revealing how the stories we carry in our bodies need to find form and expression, before they eat us alive." —The New Yorker Revivify: Breathing Life into Dead Matter Do…

Continue readingRevivify: Breathing Life into Dead Matter with Lidia Yuknavitch
$150

Delve Readers Seminar: The Book of Embraces

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The vignetted format of this text sometimes expands into short stories and sometimes shrinks into prose-poems, but regardless of any section’s length, this book is always intimate, charming, and transportive. Galeano uses journalistic research, autobiographical anecdotes, and interviews to emphasize how there really is no distinction between the personal and the political. He writes of the military dictatorship in Uruguay that forced him into exile, an Italian pantomime performance that reminded him the importance of loving your craft, a pet guinea pig that’s too afraid to leave its cage, the Chilean government’s despoiling of Pablo Neruda’s home, the fantastic dreams of his wife, and a few hundred other vignettes that advocate for love, friendship, and determination. A powerful text that uplifts humanity in the face…

Continue readingDelve Readers Seminar: The Book of Embraces
$110

Writing the Non-Fiction Book Proposal

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing a book proposal is the best first step to writing a nonfiction book for both adults and young readers. An excellent proposal helps you organize your ideas, understand the competition, and can help you land a publishing contract even before you write the book. This six-week class will take you step-by-step through the major parts of the nonfiction book proposal: the query letter, overview, competitive analysis, marketing and promotion, author background, outline and sample chapter. Bring an idea, and be ready to write. The class includes extensive handouts and questionnaires to guide your work. Class outcomes: By the end of this six week workshop, students will leave with a rough draft of a nonfiction book proposal. More information: Download 10 Reasons to Write a…

Continue readingWriting the Non-Fiction Book Proposal
$285

Delve Readers Seminar: James Baldwin

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Explore James Baldwin’s first two novels – Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room – and some of his early essays in order to deepen your understanding of the intersection of identity, morality, and power. What do these early works teach about Baldwin’s response to his own question: what does it mean to be an honest person and a good writer? September 1 - October 6, 2021 Wednesdays, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. (six sessions) online via Zoom Guide: Nicholas Buccola Nicholas Buccola is the author of The Fire Is Upon Us,The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass and the editor of The Essential Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and many other publications. He is the Elizabeth and Morris Glicksman…

Continue readingDelve Readers Seminar: James Baldwin
$240

The Path of Perseverance: Writing No Matter What

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The writing journey, exhilarating and wondrous as it is, can be punctuated with delays and disappointments. Sometimes the demands of daily life or an unexpected crisis can send us into a tailspin. How do we keep writing through chaos or a stressful live event? For many of us, the last year threw various hurdles in the way of our ability to write consistently. Yet, we pressed on. Still, some of us have yet to regain our footing, and need encouragement to keep going. If you are tired of not writing, and want to cultivate the “stick-to-it-ness” necessary for meeting your goals–no matter the challenges–this workshop is for you. Gleaning inspiration and guidance from writers like Annie Dillard, Julia Cameron, and Rumi, along with mining the…

Continue readingThe Path of Perseverance: Writing No Matter What
$190

Refuse the Given World: Breaking Blocks Through Play

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“When I sit down and start writing, I feel the given world recede, and I can just play.” —Sam Lipsyte Remember when you were a little kid, playing on the floor for hours and hours? Our best writing days are often imbued with that same sense of timelessness, freedom, wonder, and escape—in other words, our work often works best when it feels like play. In this generative writing course, we will tap into a playful mindset—by using silly rules, obstructions, oblique strategies, games, dreams, ephemera, constraints, and more—to unlock problematic works and/or generate new material. You will leave this class with more than a dozen techniques for starting a new project, breaking a block, or working through something sticky in a piece of writing. This…

Continue readingRefuse the Given World: Breaking Blocks Through Play
$290
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.